The Eidolon
by Cerrah M.T
Summary: Kamiya Kaoru was never normal with her strange dreams and Wicca, but after she's orphaned she is sent to live in a house that may require her more...spectral...abilities. DISCONTD as of 8/06/08.
1. Prologue

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin, which belongs to Watsuki-sama. I am simply borrowing his characters because, at the moment, I'm too lazy to come up with my own. X3

Midi: Nothing to say, other than this is gonna be a miniseries. Hope you enjoy.

**Warnings**: The use of tarot/oracle cards; language.

* * *

**Prologue  
**Not Allowed

* * *

"You aren't supposed to be here."

The man started. "What? Who said that?" His eyes lowered to the littleboy standing not ten feet away. "What are you doing here?"

The child continued to stare at him, unblinking.

"You aren't supposed to be here," he repeated, taking a step forward. "It's not allowed."

He chuckled and lowered his guard.

"I don't think you know what you're talking about, kid. There's no sign saying I can't-"

"You are **not **supposed to **be **here."

The force in the child's voice made the man look up again.

"Listen, kid, get **out **of my **way**!"

The man stepped forward, holding his left hand out slightly in front of him, guard once more up. The child supposed that he was trying to intimidate him. If he hadn't been dead, than maybe he would have felt scorn, but – hey, that's how things are.

"I've already told you," he said, voice clear as a bell, though maybe slightly husky, as though there was dust in his throat (there probably was.) "Flesh-living beings are not supposed to enter this building. This place is not for people like you."

The man's eyes widened in horror for a moment, but then his shook his head, chuckling a little. "I think that maybe all this dust has gotten to your head. Run home to your mommy now, okay?" He turned back around, proceeding to gather silverware from the various cabinets in the room.

"You're stealing those things."

It was not a question, merely an observation.

"Aren't you smart? Yeah, that's right." He brandished a gun carelessly, dim light reflecting off of the shiny metal. "And I'm not really into killing kids, so just leave already."

"I can't let you steal from this building – it's my task. I will give you one last chance – leave now or you'll be sorry."

When the child didn't make any move to enforce her comments, the man rolled his eyes and continued to toss silverware into a small brown knapsack.

The ghost sighed. "Don't think I didn't try to warn you."

There was a bright flash of white light,

The man's screams echoed through the night, and then all was silent and the building was once again dark and lifeless.

* * *

(**Tokyo, Japan - Thirty Years Later**.)

Kaoru stared up silently at the old apartment building where her grandfather lived. It was old and decrepit, much as she expected her mother's father to be. The building may have once been white or a pale shade of gray, but time had not shown the concrete walls mercy, and instead had allowed them to grow dim and dark from all the storms that had swept through this town. She sighed, tightened her grip around her bag a bit, and then ventured forward.

Of all the places Kamiya Kaoru could have been at that very moment, this was the last one she would have chosen. Then again, Kaoru didn't have any choice, so it's not like it mattered.

The truth was, Kaoru was an orphan - an orphan who had known ahead of time that her parents were to die. And not a very happy one at that. Point in fact, she was miserable. Her parents had died in some insane car crash merely days before and Kaoru was finding it difficult to deal with not only the sudden terror of her parents' deaths but the prospect of moving to a new cityto live with the grandfather that her mother had always referred to as "an old loony that we should've had locked up years ago."

And it was this particular old loony that was now her only immediate family and legal guardian.

Ooh...fun.

In an attempt to make herself feel better, Kaoru stuffed her hand down into her pocket and fingered the tarot cards that rested there. She'd been reading the cards for as long as she could remember. In fact, the tarot cards had been how she knew that her parents were going to die even before it happened. She shook her head, trying to rid herself of thoughts related to the accident. She didn't want to think about that. Not now.

Sighing, Kaoru reached out to push open the front door of the old house...only to have a cold chill sweep through her as soon as her fingers brushed the wood of the door.

She was immediately taken aback. The icy touch that had gone done her spine and proceeded to rush through her blood was gone, but somehow she felt as though its presence lingered.

Before she could do anything, however, the door sprang open of its own accord and a pale hand reached out from the darkness only to grab the front of Kaoru's shirt and pull her inside, her scream of fright and shock echoing in the fading daylight.

* * *

_Just so ya'll know, this used to be uploaded under my other account, but I'm downsizing and deleting, so it's now going to be here_.

_A few end notes_._ Kaoru uses the Medieval Scapini Tarot deck_. _To get a better understanding of this deck and the art of tarot as a whole, you can visit this link, without the spaces and parentheses, of course_: (www. learntarot. com/ msdesc. htm)._ If you are further interested in learning about the tarot, then there is a set of lessons written by the author of this site_. _You can find all of the available ones online at (_www. learntarot. com/ course. htm# lessons)._ Again, remove the spaces and parentheses_. _Thanks_._ Hope you enjoyed the chapter_. _One thing I'm positively notorious for is inconclusiveness in first chapters_._ I promise the next one will be significantly longer and far more interesting_._ I'm just trying out this story to see how ya'll like it_.

- **Midi Tenshi**


	2. Chapter One

**Disclaimer**: I do not own Rurouni Kenshin, which belongs to Watsuki-sama. I am simply borrowing his characters because, at the moment, I'm too lazy to come up with my own. X3

**Warnings**: The use of tarot/oracle cards; language.

* * *

**Chapter One  
**Welcome...Home?

* * *

Unable to even think, Kaoru did what instinct told her - she screamed...

...only to stop her vocal cords in their...er...tracks...when someone else managed to out-scream **her**. Her eyes snapped open of what seemed to be their own accord and she stared at her "captor," who was obviously not the fearsome phantom she'd expected but rather the loony grandfather she hadn't.

A balding head shone even in the dim lighting of the hallway, warped only by the diminishing gray hair that was combed over there. Wrinkled and pale skin hung from a square skeletal structure and sagged around his wise, if surprised, old eyes.

Kaoru supposed that in all her (supposed) grandfather's stunned glory, she must look as shocked as he, but managed to top off the discord by stammering out: "W-who're you?"

The old man blinked at her, obviously taken aback by her rather unanticipated question, before snatching his hand back from her wrist and giving his palms a good rub-down on his sweater, knobbly Adam's apple bobbing noticingly. He seemed to recover slightly thereafter and glared at the blue-eyed girl before him.

"You've gotta lot of nerve to ask me that in my own house," he snapped, crossing his arms and tapping his foot in a way reminiscent of her mother. There was obviously a genetic relation there.

Kaoru crossed her arms too, her irritation growing at an alarming rate. "Oh, do I now?" she demanded, glad that the old man was short like her so she didn't have to look up into his eyes. It lessened her intimidating appearance, she knew from experience, and she wasn't in the mood nor the disposition to take the extra time to back up her proverbial challenges with the sneaky act of lifting herself up on her tiptoes to increase her height. It was low, she knew, but she'd had to do it countless times back home when she'd been "teased" at school or on the way home from it to be taken even the least bit seriously.

Biting remarks were all well and good, but imposing height would have been preferable.

"Indeed! I believe you do! It's impolite to avoid naming yourself before asking the name of someone you aren't in the acquaintanceship of! Tsk, tsk,youngsters these days - so uppity!"

Kaoru had the overbearing temptation to retort with something that would have granted her grandfather a much larger shock than the one he'd previously experienced, but she managed to bite most of it back and instead blurted out the second thing that came to mind - "Yeah, well you're the one that pulled me into your house without asking!"

"Well, you **are** Kamiya Kaoru, my new granddaughter, aren't you?" he demanded trifily, fluttering his hands about in front of him as though his question was rhetorical but he expected a response anyway.

"Bleh, last time I checked I've been around the past seventeen years - you just haven't gotten off your lazy old ass to come say hello, you bastard!" is what Kaoru wanted to say, but she had to take into consideration that if she wanted (not really, but anyway) this to be her next place of residence, then it might not be the best idea to use that for audible reply.

"Yeah," she mumbled angrily under her breath instead, secretly proud of herself for not spouting every curse word in the book.

"Then follow me, I'll show you to your room if you aren't otherwise occupied staring at the front of the house. I can let you go back out, but I warn you that I won't be opening up the door again until ten o'clock tomorrow morning. Your choice."

Suddenly "grinding your teeth is bad for you" slipped Kaoru's mind and she found herself doing just that. "Thank you," she managed to say before strengthening her grip around the handle of her suitcase and starting up the long staircase after her grandfather at the end of the hall.

There had to be an upside to this place...right?

* * *

_Sorry that it wasn't extremely long, but now we know her grandfather's a jerk, right? Please review, it's one of my favorite motivations_. _Tanky_. _BTW, I'll reply to reviews in the next chapter_.

- **Midi**


End file.
